


selcouth

by closingdoors



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, First Kiss, Implied Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-Iron Man 1, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 17:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15369963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: The moments when she fell in love with him.





	selcouth

**Author's Note:**

> “Once my mother said to me,  
> she said: “you’re going to fall for men like your father;  
> I’m sorry—”
> 
> and I wanted to ask her if that meant I would fall for a fighter  
> and a hard fist and a fast car,  
> boys on motorcycles,  
> people who ran from their problems,  
> midnight phone calls from the beds of other women,  
> slippery mouths with tongues that twisted truth like cherry stems
> 
> or if that meant I might just be comfortable with absence.”
> 
> \- I Am A Runner, Trista Mateer

It begins with incorrect math.

 

\--

 

The first time she goes to a press conference with him, his hand is warm on her lower back. He ushers her forward first, as though she's the one the press are here for, not him. 

She glances over her shoulder. Through the orange tint of his sunglasses, she sees his eyes on her. 

 

\--

 

On the second Christmas working for him, she receives an alert from JARVIS on her pager: _Mr Stark is unresponsive. An ambulance has been called._

She meets the paramedics at the hospital. Tony's strapped to a gurney, covered in a thin sheen of sweat and unconscious, even when she swipes her hand across his forehead to push his hair back. 

Preliminary results point towards an overdose. There are no track marks on his arms, but she knows he's always been smarter than that. The doctors say it was most likely accidental, but she knows Tony's smarter than that, too.

When he wakes, she feeds him some ice chips. The condensation from the polystyrene cup creates a ring on one of the rehab leaflets the doctors had left behind. She supports Tony's head with her hand as he battles to sit up.

"Potts," he says. His voice is scratchy and he doesn't try to smile, "you don't need to be here."

"I know."

He falls back to sleep. She leaves when the sun begins to rise. 

 

\--

 

The next Christmas, she holds her breath, almost unwilling to let herself enjoy the day. 

There's no call. When she returns to work after New Year's, Tony is as bright as ever, and neither of them mention last year.

 

\--

 

She wakes in the middle of the night to ringing. Her hand pats the bed for her phone, encountering a body instead, and she hears a low, rumbling  _hello?_

Pepper blinks awake to find David, a guy she's been seeing on-and-off (due to her schedule), propped up on his elbow with a cell pressed to his ear. Normally she would roll over and fall back to sleep, only she recognises the cell as her own.

She pries the cell from his hand and notes the caller ID -  _Mr Stark -_ before quickly pressing it to her own ear.

"Mr Stark?"

The line shuts off. She knows better than to call back. 

"Don't ever," she is trembling with rage and climbing out of David's bed as she speaks, "answer my phone again."

"Sorry. If I'd known it was - well, whose boss call them at three in the morning, anyway?" 

Pepper pulls on her clothes and leaves. It's the last time she sees him.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, Tony will convince her to take vacation. She's never known a boss to actively encourage staff to be paid to do nothing. 

After being nagged about it every day for two weeks, she agrees to take a long weekend. She visits her parents and her sister but aches for work, and finds herself lying awake at night, anticipating a phone call that doesn't come. 

 

\--

 

They only kiss once.

It's in the workshop, where none of his girls can ever go. In fact, there are only three people in the entire world allowed inside. She and Tony are two of them.

He's nursing a hangover with more whiskey. She doesn't bother to harangue him about it. When she walks in, he's hunched over the desk in front of his computer, and for once he doesn't sit up. Normally, he orients his entire being around her, like he's just trying to find a place to fit.

She drops three different pieces of paperwork she needs to sign onto the desk. He doesn't flinch. She reaches over to pull his hand away from his face.

It's better and worse than she expects. There's purple blooming beneath his right eye and a cut leading a long line along the left side of his jaw. Nothing that requires stitches, however. 

She doesn't ask what happened. She pushes the pen into his hand and begins to ramble about what it is he's signing. He doesn't pay attention, she knows she's just white noise at this point, and not for the first time she wishes she knew exactly how to help him. His happiness is only ever temporary. 

After, he knocks the rest of the whiskey in his tumbler back, before pouring a new glass.

"It's nine in the morning, Mr Stark," she reminds him gently.

He pauses.

"Tell me, Potts, what would you do if you were me?"

She frowns. "I'm sorry?"

"If you woke up tomorrow and you had all my money at your disposal. No reason to stay working for me," he stops and clenches his jaw. He continues to pour the whiskey. The glass clinks. "What would you do?"

"Well... I don't really know."

"You could do anything you wanted." 

She tucks her hair behind her ears. 

"I like structure, Mr Stark. Routine. Doing anything I want doesn't appeal to me." 

The laugh he lets out is a bark. He downs the next glass he's poured himself and when he reaches for the next, she reaches out and covers her hand with his. He stops. The way he looks at her then - 

"Pepper."

It's the first time he's ever called her by anything but her surname.

She dips and kisses him before she can stop herself. His free hand curls at her jaw, his fingers flirting with her hair. It's more restrained than she could've imagined it to be. He doesn't push, and she pulls away too soon and too late, placing a hand on his chest as she does.

"We can't," she murmurs.

"I know," he replies and lets her go.

 

\--

 

Obadiah Stane has her cover for Tony when he's admitted to rehab. Tony lasts for a total of four days before he checks himself out. 

In that time, she becomes more efficient at her job than she ever has before. It's easier, somehow, with Tony not around, though she loathes herself for admitting it. 

According to Stane, it's not the first time Tony's been to rehab for substance abuse, though he won't give her a specific number. It's not a surprise, but the thought still saddens her.

When he returns back to his house he's quiet for three days. He doesn't even talk to JARVIS, who he's now installed throughout the house.

And then he throws a party. 

 

\--

 

Happy has to physically drag Tony out of an interview. The reporter implies that Howard Stark hadn't been Tony's real father and he sees red, launching through the space between them to wrap his hands around his throat.

Happy can't seem to calm him, but manages to wrestle him into a secluded hallway. Tony tries to push him off. And though she shouldn't, she nudges Happy aside and places a hand either side of Tony's face, the tips of her index fingers brushing against his temples.

"Tony."

It's all she says. He stops and focuses on her. His entire body seems to shut down and he closes his eyes, slumping against the wall. She releases him and he doesn't fight to go back for the reporter.

Pepper ends up on the phone with Legal and PR twenty minutes later. They all agree to throw a huge sum of money at the reporter and his crew to keep him quiet about the incident. She also has them add a clause to contracts for any future interview that Howard and Maria Stark shall not be discussed in any capacity. 

When she drives home that night, she wonders if there  _should_ be consequences for Tony. If maybe that would help. He keeps recklessly throwing himself at the world only to continuously rebound off of it. It must be such a lonely way to live.

The sun hangs low in the Malibu sky and as she waits for a traffic light to go green, she wonders if he's watching the same sky, or if he's hunkered down in his workshop, letting the rest of the world pass by.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, Tony terrifies her.

It's mainly when he touches drugs, which is rare but still happens more than she'd like. Apart from the time at the hospital, he only takes drugs at parties, and even then he prefers alcohol as his vice. Tony mixed with both is a bad combination.

He becomes sharp. His wit is gone and replaced with loathing. The beaming smiles he usually gives people are pushed away for a strong, crushing grip. 

One party, she arrives because the police have been called, and JARVIS notified her. Tony is arguing with the officers outside, who she can already tell won't arrest him, but his movements are jerky and his speech his erratic. It takes her thirty minutes to convince the police to leave and that she'll have the party shut down, which she could've convinced them of in ten if Tony hadn't been yelling over her shoulder the entire time, and guides him back into the house to ask the guests to leave. They're drunk and rich, so it takes them too long to filter out, and some are passed out on the floor. Some young girls hover by and Pepper excuses herself for a moment.

She emerges from the room in his house that she's grown to think of as hers. On her way out of the house she passes his room. The door is open. On the bed, there are no girls, only Tony. He's sitting on the edge, staring out of the glass wall. She almost would've thought him to be sober if not for the way his hands keep folding over and over and over each other in his lap.

He notices her hovering in the doorway and she slips her heels off. She pads over and stands in front of him, and uses her thumb to wipe away a sticky patch of whiskey he has clinging to his lips. When she moves to leave, his hand curls around her wrist to the point of bruising, but he still lets her go in the end.

 

\--

 

When her father is admitted to hospital, Tony gives her everything she needs and more. Access to the Stark health insurance plan, even though her father shouldn't qualify for it, and pulls strings to have him sent to private healthcare, as well as loaning her Happy, and giving her indefinite leave with full pay. She tries to return to work after four days but he has Happy escort her out of the house. 

After her father is discharged, she visits Tony. She presses a kiss to the corner of his lips, dangerously close -

He smiles at her, soft and brown-eyed and in love, and she swallows sharply, because she knows that he doesn't know. 

"Thank you, Tony," she murmurs, and leaves.

 

\--

 

One morning, she arrives to JARVIS informing her Tony has been in the workshop since three in the morning.

She goes down to nag him, but he's left a cupcake - red velvet, her favourite - sitting on the desk waiting for her, with one lone candle on top of it.

"Happy birthday," he says by way of greeting, appearing from under the hood of a car and lighting the candle.

"Tony, my birthday was two weeks ago."

"It was?" She nods and he shrugs, holding the cupcake out to her. "Huh. Oh well. Happy two week late birthday. Make a wish."

She does. He bothers her about it for the rest of the day, asking what her wish was. She tells him that she doesn't believe in that sort of thing. It's the first time she's ever lied to him. 

 

\--

 

During a business lunch, Rhodey lets slip that Pepper's the first assistant Tony's ever allowed into the workshop.

She chews on her quinoa thoughtfully. 

"He gave me access five days after hiring me," she points out. "I know he's strict about that workshop, but I would've thought he'd have let the others in eventually."

Rhodey shakes his head. 

"JARVIS would just deny them access."

"Tony specifically wrote code that allowed me to override orders he gives JARVIS."

Across the table, Tony is shmoozing Rhodey's boss for another weapons contract, despite the fact they closed their last deal three days ago and she's not even seen Tony work on anything new yet.

"You've worked for him for six years now," Rhodey says finally. "You ever thought of leaving? You're a smart woman. You could probably work anywhere you wanted." 

She doesn't hesitate.

"This is enough for me."

Rhodey surveys her over the top of his glass. 

"Good," is all he says, and then Tony demands their attention to tell a story about the second robot he ever built.

 

\--

 

They're headed to Shanghai, using his jet that has an overly attentive stewardess who has implied she'd sleep with Tony three times in the space of forty-five minutes, when Tony slumps low in his chair and covers his face with his hands.

"Tony?"

"How do you do it, Pepper?" 

"Do what?"

"You're always so - " He sighs and removes his hands from his face. His eyes are bloodshot and she knows it's because he hasn't had a drink in thirty-six hours. "Mom was always calm. Dad would go into a blind rage if he so much as got his math wrong, especially in his later years. Half the time I don't know why she stuck around." 

"Your dad helped defeat the nazis," she states, because it's one of the few things she knows about Howard Stark. Tony doesn't talk about him.

"He also drove their car into a fucking tree. Nothing else on the road, no ice, no nothing. Staying with him wasn't worth her life."

Pepper watches as he scratches at his jaw. The stewardess returns with a soda water for Pepper and a bourbon for Tony. He ignores her when she leaves.

She rests her head back against the plush leather of the chair.

"It was her choice, Tony," she murmurs. Tony doesn't look at her, but she knows he's hanging on to every word she says. "She must've known he was worth it."

 

\--

 

When he's missing in Afghanistan, she sleeps in his bed twice.

He never finds out.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Selcouth (adj.): Strange, unusual, rare; unfamiliar; marvellous, wondrous.


End file.
